Bryan Goldberg and Mike Venezia are two young filmmakers with a knack for biting off more than they can chew. Luckily, they always deliver. Their pursuit of entrepreneurship and filmmaking are no exception. In chasing the creation of STRT1UP they have spent countless hours with Maryland based entrepreneurs; documenting their pitches and learning what makes them tick. The passion that Bryan and Mike share for filmmaking is echoed in their experiences and impressions of startup founders. This shared belief in breaking boundaries and the value in quiting their day job is what drove Bryan and Mike into directing this film.

Hello friends, family, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders,

With genuine pride we hope to inform you of a pretty cool accomplishment of the Startup Maryland and With the Film teams from this past year.

As many of you already know, we went into the annual Pitch Across Maryland with plans to dive deeper into the stories of the entrepreneurs but also catching some behind the scenes glimpses of the ecosystem leaders who embody the spirit of collaboration that makes Maryland a great place to start and grow a business.

Building on the success of three years, we aspired to capture the camaraderie behind the Pitch Across Maryland and the growing culture of entrepreneurship in Maryland. We are pleased to announce that together, the team here at With the Film worked diligently with the Startup Maryland team to produce a feature length documentary entitled STRT1UP.

STRT1UP strives to be an honest look into what builds quality startup ecosystems; concentrating on both accomplishments as a community as well as goals and objectives yet to be realized. The film takes place, in part, during the 2015 tour and, although we captured hundreds of hours of incredible footage, we had to distill the content down to a manageable documentary.

We are incredibly excited to begin sharing it with you. We have planned various short screeners of the doc in hopes to share some thoughts on Startup Maryland and some insight into our approach to documentary filmmaking. These events will happen throughout the summer in connection with various sponsors and locals featured in the doc. We hope to encourage everyone to reach out or join us for one of these events as we begin to share this incredible project.